Into a Paris Quartier

Read all day. In one sitting finished Into a Paris Quartier by Diane Johnson. Another in the National Geographic series.

What I learned was that Edith Wharton lived at 54 rue de Varenne and that is where she wrote French Ways and Their Meanings (which I just finished yesterday). I must have walked past her apartment in September 2010 many times as I stayed for a week at the Hotel De Varenne, on rue de Bourgogne, just around the corner. Johnson refers to Wharton's book which she wrote as an explanation of the French to the American soldiers stationed in and around Paris in World War One.

Johnson lives in the St.Germain-de-Pres area on the Left Bank. As of the 2005 publication date of the book, she lives in Paris for six months and in San Francisco for the rest of the year.

Good news. Downton Abbey Season Two begins tonight on PBS. I don't have a television but can watch episodes on my laptop. I rented the DVD of season one and was enchanted. And lustful for that way of life. Who wouldn't be? And now have rewatched the season on PBS. I even took the quiz as to which character I most resembled: Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, of course.  Dame Maggie Smith gets all the best lines.

Plummy.